A Harte Appetite: Cuisinart inventor died unknown but left a huge mark in the cooking world

Carl G. Sontheimer died recently at the age of 83. Though he invented a device used in a NASA moon mission, not much press attention was given to his passing and you may not have ever heard of him. But if you have even a modest interest in cooking, you doubtless have heard of his most famous invention, because it revolutionized food preparation. Carl Sontheimer invented the Cuisinart.

It all started back in 1971 when Sontheimer, whose interest in cooking rivaled his interest in technology, attended a housewares show in France and spotted a machine called the Magimix, a scaled down home version of the Robot-Coupe, a food processor invented years earlier by Pierre Verdon, a French catering company salesman, for use in commercial kitchens.

Sontheimer recognized that the device had great potential for the American market and obtained the U.S. distribution rights to the machine. First, however, he spent a couple of years refining and redesigning the appliance -- improving the blades, incorporating safety mechanisms, and tweaking the way food was fed into it.

Sontheimer then introduced his Cuisinart to this country at a national housewares exposition in Chicago in 1973, just as Americans were becoming more interested in cooking and kitchen gadgets (though a Cuisinart is far more than a mere gadget). Nonetheless, it didn't take off. To many consumers it seemed little more than a glorified blender, even though it is of a totally different design.

So Sontheimer, whose entrepreneurial skills were on a par with his culinary and engineering abilities, provided Cuisinarts to Julia Child, James Beard, Craig Claiborne and other food celebrities of the time. With their endorsements, the device became the next big thing in kitchen appliances. Claiborne called it "perhaps the best food invention since toothpicks."

A slice of gougere pairs well with a salad for lunch or a light supper. It can also be served as an appetizer. (TOM HARTE)

Ultimately Cuisinart became a proprietary eponym, like Kleenex or Xerox, that is used generally to refer to an entire class of things, in this case food processors. And why not? For my money (and it's the most expensive gizmo in my kitchen) it is the best food processor you can buy. There's hardly anything it can't do -- from shredding and slicing to pureeing and blending to grinding and pulverizing.

As Mark Bittman of The New York Times explains, it replaces the whisk, the pastry cutter, the standing mixer, the mandoline, the mortar and pestle, and the grater, among others. He rightly observes that it can change the way you cook and even embolden you to try recipes you assuredly would not otherwise. For example, I wouldn't attempt Julia Child's coulibiac without a Cuisinart, and, she confessed, neither would she.

Thanks to Carl Sontheimer, cooks everywhere now have due process.

Tom Harte's book, "Stirring Words," is available at local bookstores. A Harte Appetite airs Fridays 8:49 a.m. on KRCU, 90.9 FM. Contact Tom at semissourian.com or at the Southeast Missourian, P.O. Box 699, Cape Girardeau, MO 63702-0699.